Johann Paul Friedrich Richter

“ The burgomaster was gratified that the poor devil should have it. It was the first time in the dukedom of Haslan that the tears of a teacher and preacher, like those of the goddess Freya, had changed into gold. Glanz was profuse in his congratulations, and jocosely reminded Flachs that he himself had perhaps been instrumental in bringing about this happy consummation.
Jean Paul Friedrich Richter (1763-1825) .
DIVISION OF LABOUR IN MATTERS SENTIMENTAL. LOVE is the perihelion of women—ay, it is the transit of such a Venus through the sun of the ideal world. ”

“ If there be a regular German of the Germans beyond the Rhine and be-north the Alps, whom, notwithstanding (perhaps partly by reason of) his faults and eccentricities, we love, and honour, and reverence, and clasp to our true British breast with a genuine feeling of brotherhood,—this man is Jean Paul Frederick Richter. ”

“ Then came Swift, Sterne, with others less distinguished; in Germany, Hippel the friend of Kant, Harmann the obscure, and the greatest of the whole body—John Paul Friedrich Richter. In him, from the strength and determinateness of his nature as well as from the great extent of his writing, the philosophy of this interaction between the author as a human agency and his theme as an intellectual reagency might best be studied. ”

“ O, your Clotilde should know her; she has, excepting her charms, half her soul. No discord exists between her outer and inner harmony; her earnest, generous soul resembles the palm-tree, which has neither bark nor branches, but which bears broad foliage and buds on its summit. "Gione," said Nadine, "these arguments unsettle our minds, instead of removing our doubts." "No one," she replied, "has yet given his opinion; if we even have the firmest convictions, still by their beautiful conformity with another's convictions our own become more beautiful and firm." ”

“ Deeply touched by human virtue, he wept out of his boundless love for men, who, amid the craving of their own needs, under low-hung clouds, behind mists which stream over the sharp-cutting paths of life, never turn away from the lofty star of duty, but in their darkness stretch out loving arms towards every suffering breast they encounter, while around them nothing glimmers but the hope of setting like the sun in the old world, in order to arise in the new. ”

“ A hired country-house, at the end of the valley, was the architectural Eden with which Wilhelmi intended to surprise and delight his bride in this botanic one. But Nadine alone knew it.
In as many moments as a swan would take to spread his wings and rise, we were all ready. I do not blame man for making preparations for the examination for death, but for no (shorter) journey. The long hunt destroys the game of enjoyment. I, for my part, never think of starting until I am on the road.
Wilhelmi loaded himself with his bride's guitar; Karlson carried a portable ice-cellar. ”

“ I cannot tell you how this glance, turned from the vast whole on to a beautiful small portion, gave a warmer glow to our hearts and to nature. Instead of the hand, we could only hold, like children, the fingers of the great mother of life, and reverently kiss them. By the creation, God became human for men, as therefore for angels an angel,—like the sun whose bright immensity the painter gently divides into the beauties of a human face. ”

“ As for Professor Carus, he was too busy with his theorems and biological experiments to trouble himself about so trivial a matter as a youngster falling in love with his accomplished wife—here the Professor's good sense was shown.
Jean Paul Richter lighted his torch at the flame of Jean Jacques Rousseau. In a letter to Agnes Carus, Schumann has acknowledged his obligation to Richter, in a style that is truly Richteresque.
Says Robert:
Dear Lady:—I read from Jean Paul last night until I fell asleep and then I dreamed of you. ”

“ Gione and Karlson concealed an equal emotion, as at an almost equal fate. Wilhelmi, who is, as a comet, sometimes in the burning, sometimes in the freezing point of a sun, requires no joys than those of others to make him happy. But a tear stood in Nadine's bright eye, which could not be smiled or looked away. Her heart seemed to me to resemble the earth, whose exterior is cold, but which carries in its centre a latent heat. And yesterday her whole being seemed so mirthful and so gay!
We never make more erroneous conclusions in our opinions on any subject than on woman's cheerfulness. ”

“ MacManus, S. Riching versus Providence. Moulton, L. C. Richter, C. Head of his house In Green, F. S. ed. Grim thirteen Richter, Jean Paul Friedrich, 1763-1825 Army-Chaplain Schmelzle's journey to Flätz In Carlyle, T: German romance v 2 Life of Quintus Fixlein In Carlyle, T: German romance v 2 Rici, Richard White sleep of Auber Hum In Howells, W. D., and Alden, H. M. Shapes that haunt the dusk Rickford, Katherine Joseph ”

“ Fortunately, the French wine armed him more with French customs, and he asked the Baron politely: "I believe I owe M. Karlson some proofs of our immortality. Might I be allowed to give them?" Wilhelmi sent him to Gione, saying, "Ask there." Gione willingly granted his request, and said, "Why should not recollections of immortality ornament our joys as much as monuments do English gardens?" Nadine threw in the question, "But if men quarrel about the hopes of humanity, what remains for women?" "Her heart and its hopes, Nadine," said Gione. ”

“ Ah, my Victor! nations and men are only the best when they are the gladdest, and deserve Heaven when they enjoy it. The tear of grief is but a diamond of the second water, but the tear of joy of the first. And therefore fatherly fate, thou spreadest the flowers of joy, as nurses do lilies in the nursery of life, that the awakening children may sleep the sounder! O, let philosophy, which grudges our pleasures, and blots them out from the plans of Providence, say by what right did torturing pain enter into our frail life? Have we not already an eternal right to a warm down bed? ”

“ But let the disbeliever of immortality imagine a life of sixty minutes instead of sixty years, and let him try if be can bear to see loved, noble, or wise men only aimless, hour-long air-phantoms, hollow thin shadows which fly towards the light and are consumed by it, and who, without path, trace, or aim, after a short flight, dissolve into their former night. No; even over him steals a supposition of immortality. Else a black cloud would forever hang over his soul, and the earth would quake beneath him when he trod on it, as if he were a Cain. ”

“ We have learnt to know the man; and the man in this case is as good, perhaps better, than his works. No well-conditioned person, we are convinced, will lay down the biography of Richter without an earnest desire to know something more of such a man. He will be convinced also that the novels of such a writer will not be made up of mere playful arabesques to amuse, of mere pepper and spices to stimulate; he will have felt the breath of a moral regeneration in these pages, and that a novel of Jean Paul is in fact a sermon ”

“ As the Angel of the last hour saw the battle-fields stretched before him, full of blood and tears, and drew the trembling souls away, his mild eyes melted, and he said: "Ah! I will once die like man, that I may enter into his last agony, and soothe it when I dissolve the ties of life!" ”

“ Why weep ye, tender children, that your parents, after the same sufferings, should now have the same joys? that now, after their winter of life, an ever-lasting May has dawned on their souls? Does the painted spring-house under the earth trouble you, or the black boundary-hill on the earth, or the dread hand of decay, which extinguishes earthly scars and wounds and the whole body? ”

“ Among these was "Hesperus," published in 1794, which made him one of the most famous of German writers. Fanciful and extravagant as the work is, and written without any regard to the laws of composition, it is nevertheless stamped with genius. In all Richter's stories the plot goes for nothing; it is on the thoughts that he strikes out by the way that his fame depends.
I.--Friendship
"Victor," said Flamin, to the young Englishman, "give me this night thy friendship for ever, and swear to me that thou wilt never disturb me in my love to thee. ”

“ Jean Paul, inspired by Jean Jacques, was the inspirer of the whole brood of young writers of his time. To him they looked as to a Deliverer.112 Jean Paul the Only! The largest, gentlest, most generous heart in all literature! The peculiar mark of Richter's style is analogy and comparison; everything he saw reminded him of something else, and then he tells you of things of which both remind him. He leads and lures you on, and takes you far from home, but always brings you safely back. Yet comparison proves us false when we deal with Richter himself. ”

“ The stars were nearer; the heaven-blue lay on the flowers; all the breezes were melodious tones; and repose and ravishment, which with us are sundered, there dwelt conjoined. And the dead, from around whom had fallen that mist of life which veiled the higher heaven before, rested like mild evening suns in the azure ether. ”

“ Wilhelmi said, that, to rise into Eden or Arcadia, he would need no larger wings than the four of a butterfly. What a poetical, paradisaical existence, like the papilio, to roam without stomach or hunger, among buds and flowers, to suffer no long night, no winter, and no storm, to toy away one's life in a delightful chase for another papilio, or to nestle, like the flower-colored bird of paradise, among lemon-blossoms, to float round blooming honey-cups, and to be rocked in silken cradles! ”

“ Just then the ecstasy opened his wounds, and blood, the tear of the soul, flowed from his heart upon the cherished knoll,—the dissolving body sank quietly towards his beloved,—tears of rapture broke the sunset light into a rosy, swimming sea,—distant echoing tones, as of the earth passing wide through ringing ether, played in the vaporous lustre. Then a dark cloud or short night shot by the Angel, and was full of sleep; and now a radiant heaven opened and overspread him, and a thousand angels shone around. ”

“ The nightingales and the larks loudly sung its welcome, the rosechafers rustled round its lily garlands, and the eagle, riding on the highest cloud, surveyed it from mountain to mountain. How rurally all things surrounded the serpentine field-embracing Adour. The marble walls, not raised by human skill, surround its flower-beds like large vases, and the Pyrenees, with their high tops, watch over and protect the lowly scattered shepherd huts. Tranquil Tempe! May a storm never disturb thy gardens and thy murmuring Adour. ”

“ The mighty vacancy and silence of space lay stretched before us even up into the stars;—as we rose higher, the dark forests seemed but clouds, and snow-girt mountain-tops like snow-flakes. The ascending globe bore us nearer to the harmless, silent lightning of the moon, in whose bright satellite we seemed cradled, and which stood as a calm Elysium beneath the heavens, and high above the thick fog air, the light heart beating more quickly, seemed to pant with ethereal gladness to have left the earth with out discarding its shell covering. ”

“ But over the whole sky there hang only earth and fire-balls, and all things on them, from milk-way to milk-way, are less than the wishes and longings of our hearts. Then why should our earth alone, why not every other also, be progressing? why should they, rather than we, have the start in this inaugural eternity? In short, it may be disputed if in the whole universe there are other angels and archangels than Victor and Jean Paul. ”

“ In the morning, before sunrise, Karlson and myself stepped out into the wide cloud-tapestried bridal-chamber of nature. The moon approached the double moment of its waning and its fulness. The sun, standing on America as on a burning altar, drove the cloudy incense of its feu de joie high and red into the air; but a morning tempest boiled angrily above it, and darted its fierce lightnings to meet his ascending rays. The oppressive heat of nature drew longer and louder plaints from the nightingales, and evanescent aroma from the long flower-meads. ”

“ I cannot possibly believe that there exists one being who, when death draws him into the diving-bell of the grave, will not leave one weeping eye, one bending head behind, and therefore each one can love the soul which will some time weep for him.
When I think now of the convalescent Gione, with her wounded heart, which had received a new sensitiveness in the hot electric atmosphere of the sinking thunderbolt of Death, I need not measure her emotion at Karlson's poem, by the dew and hygrometer, nor with the loadstone of her love. ”

“ She sank before the weeping Angel, not like the sun, who before all-beholding Nature casts himself so gorgeous into the sea that its red waves strike the very heaven, but like the tranquil moon, who, in the midnight, silvers the vaporous air, and sinks down unseen behind its dim veil. ”

“ By Heaven! it is no wonder that man rises and will go on; for does not the sun follow the pedestrian from tree to tree? does not its reflected likeness swim after him in the water? do not landscapes, mountains, hills, men, rapidly changing, come and go? and does not Freedom's breath blow on the ever-varying Eden, when, released from the neck and heart-breaking chains of narrow circumstances, we fly freely and gladly, as in dreams, over ever-new scenes. ”